Fill your lungs and empty your mind – deep-breathing techniques will help you keep a clear head

Nobody wants to be told they’re not doing the essentials correctly, but I think it’s time we talked about the fact you’re not breathing right. Well, OK, you’re alive so you’ve got the bare essentials down. But how about the ways you can breathe to make the more extreme moments more bearable?

The way you breathe when exerting yourself or when things get stressful can have a huge impact on how you deal with these particularly difficult states: ask anyone who’s ever been bad at breathing during a workout. Actually, you don’t even need to ask them, because we spoke to the experts in breathing about how exactly you can change the way you face a crunch time via inhalation and exhalation.

Chris Baréz-Brown

"Breathing seems like something we do unconsciously, without thinking about it. However, over the years, most of the senior executives I've worked with say that learning how to breathe properly has changed their lives. Recent research shows the positive impact deep breathing has on our ability to deal with stress. Learning how to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure impacts your productivity and creativity. The emotional intelligence service TalentSmart conducted research with more than a million people and found that 90 per cent of top performers are skilled in remaining calm under stress.

"Luckily for us, we can all learn to breathe better and keep stress in check. Most of the time we only use the top third of our lungs, especially when we are stressed. It's the bottom third of our lungs, however, that supply two thirds of our breathing capacity. As a result, our cognitive abilities go slack, we have trouble staying alert and often just have less fun.

"There are plenty of ways to breathe more deeply, but the approach I use is the five-six-seven method:

1. Breathe in through your nose for a count of five, feel your belly expanding.
2. Hold that breath for a count of six.
3. Blow out through your mouth for a slow count of seven.
4. Repeat until you feel calm and connected.

"Breathe well; it's the secret of life."

Alan Dolan, Breath Guru

"Our brand of Conscious Connected Breathing aims to open up the full capacity of the lungs (on average we use about 25 per cent) in order to release excess emotional baggage, increase oxygen to starved tissue and recharge energy levels.

"Not only is our breathing technique an effective and healthy way to protect ourselves from the ravages of stress and anxiety, it also provides an immediate remedy for dealing with symptoms as they occur.

"The beauty of our technique is that you can do it yourself at home:

1. Lie on your back on the floor in a quiet spot where you wont be disturbed. Place a pillow under your head and shoulders.
2. Begin to breathe through your mouth. Your mouth should be open wide enough so that you can get your index and middle finger in between your upper and lower teeth.
3. Breathe deeply into your abdomen, just below your navel. Imagine you are inflating a balloon in your stomach with each inhale.
4. Without pausing, release your breath in a short, soft sigh, like fogging a mirror.
5. Again, without pausing, take a deep inhale through your mouth and continue the steps.
6. The key is to keep the breath flowing so that each inhale and exhale is connected, continuously moving."

Rebecca Dennis

"Breathing more deeply and at a slower pace has been proven to have a number of benefits, including decreasing your blood pressure, bringing energy more efficiently into your cells, helping the ageing process, relaxing tension in your muscles and improving your mood by elevating the levels of serotonin and endorphins. Deep diaphragmatic breathing for a few minutes each day will help reduce anxiety and stress. Understanding and using the breath purposefully is a skill that can enhance every aspect of your life. Conscious breathing improves both your physical and mental health and is a great tool to help handle everyday stresses and challenges.

"Deep belly breathing increases the supply of oxygen to your brain and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes a state of calmness. There are many breathing techniques to help you feel connected to your body but just by simply keeping your awareness of your breathing throughout the day can help to quieten the mind and keep your physiology in a state of calm rather than hovering in a state of low anxiety.

"Relax your jaw, face and shoulders. Remember you don’t need to use you shoulder and neck muscles to breathe. You want your shoulders to stay down and relaxed.

"One of the first steps in learning to breathe well is to learn diaphragmatic deep breathing. Often when we control emotions such as anger or control pain we hold our breath, which creates long-term tension in the diaphragm. The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle that sits below the lungs. When you breathe in, the diaphragm contracts and flattens downward creating a vacuum that draws in air. When you exhale, the diaphragm returns to its dome shape, pushing air out of the body.

"You can do this sitting up anywhere, at your desk, on the train or at home on the sofa. Rest your hands on your lower belly so you can feel the breath expanding and moving through your body.

"Keep your spine long, feel your sitting bones on your seat and feet flat on the ground. Hold your head in a neutral position as if there is a thread at the centre of your head holding it up towards the sky. Allow your throat to relax.

"Breathe in slowly through your nose. Let the air flow as you inhale and expand your belly — expanding the sides and lower ribs, filling the diaphragm, back and lower back. Allow the deep inhale to push your belly out.

"Let the breath go with a gentle sigh through the nose or mouth on the exhale and feel the belly coming in. Don't force the air out, no need to push a river, and simply allow it to flow in and out of the body. Repeat this ten to 20 times and notice how you feel."

Stuart Sandeman, Breathpod

"Breathing is your best friend when dealing with stress and other emotions. You may have noticed that your state of mind and emotions are associated with distinct patterns of breath. Typically when you feel stressed, anxious or afraid, you breathe short and shallow. This is because a cluster of several thousand neurons deep within the brainstem are in charge of auto generating different types of breath: excited, sighing, yawning, gasping, laughing, sobbing and so on. These neurons also monitor the signal they receive back from the breath pattern and relay a message accordingly to a part of the brain that then triggers a response – alertness, distress, relaxation, attention, excitement, stress or anxiety.

"When stressed, something in your environment has triggered the brain to auto generate a stressed ‘sympathetic' breath pattern. You breathe in more air to increase muscle blood flow and tension, dilate pupils, accelerate heart rate and respiration and increase arterial blood pressure. It's often referred to as fight or flight mode. It’s a safety mechanism to protect you from threat.

"When you are relaxed and calm, your parasympathesitc system is engaged, creating a ‘rest and digest response’.

"The amazing thing about your breath is as well as being an autonomic function you can consciously control it. This means you can alter your breathing to override and hack the messages transmitted from the body’s respiratory system to the neuropathways in the brain.

"This means that if there is no immediate threat or danger in your environment (no tiger chasing you...) you can turn stress to calm instantly!

"Try the 4-4-8 breath technique:

1. Inhale through the nose for a count of four.
2. Hold breath for a count of four.
3. Exhale through pursed lips for a count of eight.
4. Repeat for four rounds.

"Naturally, as humans, we also hold our breath to protect ourselves from being overwhelmed by our feelings and emotions. This can reduce your ability to breathe deeply and fully.

"Think about the times you have been angry, clenching your jaw, shaking your fist and holding your breath. Or perhaps a time when you were upset, but it was not appropriate to burst into tears. What do you do to stop yourself? You hold your breath. Or that time when something was extremely amusing which shouldn’t have been and you had to hold your breath to stop the laughter. All of these are very conscious examples of holding our breath to control our emotions. However, anytime we repress or suppress any emotion or feeling, we do so by controlling our breath. Our brain tries to protect us from an uncomfortable feeling. This contraction of breathing muscles stops the emotion in its tracks, which is theoretically 'energy in motion', and stops us from fully integrating the feeling into the present moment. Our breath is then restricted and we lose the ability to breathe deeply and fully. We can consciously learn to free these restrictions in the breath and balance the emotional charge by practicing conscious connected breath techniques."